


Zero Sum

by oppisum



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Small Town, Atmospheric, Coming Out, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Rumors, The South, enough rumors to make a Fleetwood Mac album, possibly-on-the-spectrum Cas
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-05-22 00:43:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 16,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6064317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oppisum/pseuds/oppisum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When family scandal forces Castiel to move to rural North Carolina, he meets Sam, a local teen dogged by vicious rumors, and his gruff brother Dean. Despite everything, he finds belonging with the Winchesters and a home staring at the stars from their back porch.</p>
<p>But in a small southern town where shadows of the past haunt, secrets can’t stay hidden between the three, and Cas discovers that sometimes rumors are more than idle talk.</p>
<p> <i>Or, in which Dean is overprotective, Cas is sick of rumors, and Gabe wants the angst to stop oozing all over his bamboo.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story is my white whale-- I will forever be chasing it. Please enjoy.
> 
> Soundtrack: [HERE [link updated so it actually works]](http://8tracks.com/oppisum/zero-sum-a-wincestiel-au)
> 
> Extended author's notes and miscellaneous posts about the 'verse are kept [on tumblr](http://oppisum.tumblr.com/tagged/zerosum) (may contain spoilers for later chapters).

| [Soundtrack](http://8tracks.com/oppisum/zero-sum-a-wincestiel-au) | [Tumblr Page](http://oppisum.tumblr.com/zerosum) |

 

The North Carolina air hangs still and slow and pressing. It sticks to Castiel’s skin and lingers in his lungs, unfamiliar in its persistence. In the woods of the Smoky Mountain summer, time passes in the screech of cicadas and the crawl of kudzu. Every step he takes feels like a battle against humidity.

Well, Cas muses, against humidity and gravity and the disintegrating foliage of the mountain path.

“Try for some fresh air. Or will the sun wilt you?” Gabriel had asked with mock concern. “You’ve been haunting my kitchen for nearly a week. Take your book and go take a hike.”

Gabe wouldn’t have made him leave, Cas knows, and now he’s regretting taking his cousin’s advice.

But Gabe’s particularly patterned decorating sense and fondness for Yankee Candles was starting to make Cas’s head spin, and tromping up a mountainside sounded better than reading at Gabriel’s kitchen table for the fifth day in a row. Neon curtains and a red refrigerator were starting to imprint themselves on Cas’s retinas.

The humidity wraps around him like a full-body embrace, but he keeps walking. He walks until his breath comes in shallow huffs and yesterday’s rain seeps into his shoes. He walks until he can’t feel his feet and can’t hear the buzz of his own mind, just the buzz of the cicadas. He pushes forward towards a summit he’ll never reach, like he can sweat out the memory of his brothers’ lies.

He thinks about how he needs to do laundry again and how he needs to find a Goodwill. He thinks about how he should probably find a barber and replace his razor. He does not, however, think about where he should place his feet.

The muddy leaves slide from under his foot, and Cas’s ankle gives way like folding cardboard. He slides back down the steep path, breath hissing out viciously through his teeth. The world spins in a carnival ride of foliage as he works to grab something, anything, to break his momentum. His ribs collide with a tree trunk, and the word abruptly stills.

Winded, Cas lays still for a long moment trying to regain his stolen breath.

He thinks he might hate these mountains, this town, this state. He thinks of home and of a full closet. He thinks, however, that he hates home more, hates Boston and everything it stands for in his life. He thinks he can almost muster enough energy to hate his brothers, right at this moment. Acerbic words roil through his mind, but all that comes out is a pained, “Fuck.”

If he thought he could move his ankle, he’d kick something.

Instead, he fights back against the maw of depression and desperation that threatens to swallow him as his anger dissipates.

The underbrush rustles, and twig snaps somewhere nearby. Cas pushes himself to sitting, looking around for anywhere to go. He doesn’t know whose land he’s on, but with his luck they’re the “trespassers will be shot” type.

“Hello?” a voice calls.

Cas remains resolutely silent.

“Someone out here?” the voice calls again, just as a booted foot finds its way onto the path. “I heard-- oh.”

A tall boy in a faded Metallica shirt stares at Cas, apparently just as surprised as Cas. His eyes widen as he takes in Cas’s state, and in an instant he’s kneeling at his side, headless of the mud. The guy runs anxious his fingers back through his sweat-soaked bangs.

“Hey,” he says carefully, reaching a hand towards Cas like he’s a shy animal. And _damn_ , Cas realizes how harried he must look with leaves in his hair and sweat plastering his clothes to him, how the momentary mishap must have bought out the frantic edge hiding just under the blue of his eyes. “Are you okay?”

Cas has to look away from the weight of the concern written across the guy’s face. “Fine,” He says. To prove his point, Cas makes to stand, only for his ankle to give a twinge of protest and fold again.

“Dude, stay down.” Mystery guy reaches for Cas’s ankle with careful hands. He pushes up the too-short hem of Cas’s slacks and carefully brushes over the skin there. “It doesn’t feel broken, just sprained,” he says, and it’s such a _Sense and Sensibility_ moment that Cas wants to laugh for the first time in months.

Something must show in his face-- that, or the guy is psychic-- because he cocks his head to one side and says, “This got real Jane Austen real fast. I’m Sam Winchester, by the way.”

“Cas,” he says, and then decides against being a complete asshole. “Thank you for your concern, but I’ll be alright. My car is parked at the little church by the river.”

Sam scowls at him. “At least let me help you back to the main road.”

Cas wants to protest, wants to prove he can manage on his own, but he wants even more to get out of the damn woods before nightfall. So instead of demuring, he takes Sam’s offered hand and lets himself be helped up. He stands awkwardly for a moment before Sam ducks and wraps Cas’s arm around his shoulders.

“What were you doing all the way out here?” Sam asks as they make their way back down the trail.

“I could ask you the same,” Cas shoots back, but answers, “I was reading. Or, well, planning to. _A Woman of No Importance_ by–”

“Oscar Wilde, yeah.” Sam grins. Castiel blinks, and the guy gives a lopsided smile that dimples at the edges. “That’s a good one. It’s a pity most of his compilations don’t even include it.”

They lapse into silence as they pick their way down the steep path. There’s a good five inch difference between them, Sam can’t be much older than him-- seventeen or eighteen at the most. He seems nice, genuine in a way so few people are around Cas.

“I was out here killing time until my brother gets off work,” Sam says, answering Cas’s earlier question. “He and I live on the far edge of town.”

And there’s something about the way he says it-- “ _He and I live_ ”-- that hangs in Cas’s mind.

“You live with him? Just him?” Cas questions.

Sam’s jaw muscle clenches, standing out in sharp relief, but his voice stays even. “Yep. Just us.”

For the first time Cas sees the signs of Dangerous Territory written on Sam’s face and decides not to pry. The last six months have taught him the value of privacy, if nothing else. Instead, he lets them lapse back into silence.

“So, Cas,” Sam starts. “What’s that short for?”

“Castiel.” The name comes out clipped and stiff, like some sort of Pavlovian response to conversations requiring personal details.

Sam worries his lip. “I don’t think I’ve seen you around before. Vacation in small-town North Carolina?”

Castiel hesitates, but then reminds himself there’s no way Sam knows who he is. Most of the news reports just call him ‘the Novak’s youngest son,’ and no one has connected Gabe to the family yet.

“I’m visiting my cousin for summer break,” Cas says. “Maybe a while longer.”

“A while” is a rather large understatement. He’s not here just for summer break, not if he has his way.  He fled Boston with no intention of going back, and with the direction the trial is going, pretty soon, Gabe will be the only of-age non-felon in his immediate family. Who would’ve thought. They’d only discussed it once, but Gabe seemed perfectly content to let Cas stay with him until he graduates, even if that’s two years off.

“Maybe I’ll see you around, and we can hang out sometime. I mean, you voluntarily read Wilde, so you get a pass from me.”

Sam’s grin is wide and earnest, giving the impression of an excited, gangly puppy eager to make a friend. Cas forces his arm to stay relaxed where it’s wrapped around Sam and reminds himself that this dimply teenager isn’t a reporter trying to trap him. Still, he decides to steer the conversation into less potentially damning waters before Sam realize Cas isn’t someone he should be seen “hanging out” with.

Cas casts around for something normal to ask. “What do you and your friends like to do in this area? I’m not familiar with what’s around.”

The question sounds just as awkward as he fears, like a middle-aged father trying to talk to his estranged kids. Relating to people his age has never been Cas’s strong point. Even in Boston, school was a place to learn and leave, not socialize. His closest friend had been Balthazar, a thirty-five-year-old, camp-as-tits stock trader who worked at the firm before the shitstorm. Like Cas, Balthazar had been one of the guiltless caught in the media fallout.

Sam’s smile takes on a wooden edge.

“Well, there’s a bowling alley off 2nd, I think. We’ve also got a great video rental store-- if you still own a VCR, that is,” he says, voice taking on an edge of faux concern. “Besides that, I’m not sure what the local teenagers do. Well, other than the requisite drugs, sex, and alcohol.”

Cas’s brow furrows. “Are you not from this area?”

And just like that, the puppy eyes are gone, replaced by a closed, wary stare that looks too old for the face wearing it.

“I am. I just don’t spend a whole lot of time with the people I go to school with.”

Castiel doesn’t understand the defiance he sees on Sam’s face, but he recognizes that the subject is closed.

All in all, it takes less than fifteen minutes for them to get back to the riverbank, and Cas takes a moment to wonder just how long he spent wandering in circles on the mountainside. Traffic rushes past on the main road as they clear the treeline. A tiny white church sits nestled in the curve of the river, its parking lot empty save one car, and Sam stops, eyes sparkling.

“ _That’s_ your car?” he asks. “No offence, man, but that’s not what I expected.”

“My cousin’s car,” Cas corrects. He looks accusingly at the electric blue Mini Cooper and lets out a sigh. “He has-- _bold_ tastes. The interior of his house could put Liberace to shame.”

“Oh, god.”

“Indeed. There’s zebra print. Need I say more?”

Sam’s face contorts in horror. “Remind me never to go to him for decorating advice. Oh, hey, speaking of, I never caught your last name.”

Castiel hesitates before letting out a long breath. “Novak,” he says like a death sentence. “It’s Novak.”

He waits for the usual outrage and accusation, but it never comes. Sam just continues to smile down at him like he hasn’t just given one of the decade’s most hated family names. Or so says _60 Minutes_ , anyhow.

“Novak?” Sam questions. “Don’t think I know anyone else in town by that name.”

“No, I suppose not,” he says, caught off guard by the total lack of response. “Gabriel’s last name is Milton.”

If Sam doesn’t know who he is, Cas isn’t going to fill him in. Someone else will, eventually. Or he’d turn on the news.

Or open a newspaper.

Or listen to the radio.

Sam helps Cas over to the car and looks sceptical as he unlocks the driver’s door. “You sure you’re okay driving?”

“Left ankle, and the car’s an automatic,” Cas says. “Besides, Gabriel works night shift, and I have to get the car back so he can go to work.”

Sam looks even more skeptical, but just then, a black car pulls off into the parking lot, engine a throaty growl. A man with close-cropped brown hair sits in the driver’s seat, arm resting on the rolled-down window. And Jesus Christ is he gorgeous. Even from this far that’s clear. While Sam is attractive, he’s still in the late stages of lanky adolescence. His brother, on the other hand, looks like something out of a Levi’s ad-- ridiculously, jaw-droppingly handsome with tanned skin, grease smears, and just the right amount stubble.

“Sam-ay! C’mon; it’s pizza night!” he calls out the window.

Sam claps Cas on the shoulder. “Got to go. I’ll see you tomorrow, m’kay?”

“Who’s that?” Cas hears the older man ask as the car pulls away. Cas sits where Sam left him as he watches the taillights disappear around the mountain curves.

~*~

The whistle of the midnight train drifts in through the open window as Cas lays awake atop the covers. His mother’s quilt covering the scratchy sheets is the only personal touch among the bland Myrtle Beach theme of Gabe’s guest room. He stares at the ceiling of what’s become his room over the last two weeks and thinks longingly of working air conditioning the the lullaby of the city.

The silence that surrounds the house as soon as the train passes seems impenetrable-- pressing and smothering just like the humidity and the dark. Here in the land of “God bless your soul”, Cas wonders that anyone makes it to adulthood without smothering.

Then again, maybe they learn to breathe it in-- the dark, the silence, the humidity, the faith.

Cas grew up in religion, had attended Catholic school until he left Boston, but here in the Protestant mountains, the Word of God feels both more and less.

No matter what perish or denomination, though, Cas will always be queer, and maybe he’s still learning how to piece those parts of himself together. He doubts Gabe would care, doubts he’s attended Mass once since he left, but maybe it’s less about what others think and more about his own perception of himself.

Some nights-- nights like this when depression and desperation and insomnia feed into an endless loop that makes his eyes and head and chest ache-- he lays half-awake wondering about hell and about if he or his faithfully deceptive brothers will end up there. He thinks how _tired_ life makes him some days and that maybe it’d all be more restful if there wasn’t an afterlife.

The endless tick of the oscillating fan is like a metronome to Cas’s jumbled thoughts. He flops onto his side and stares out the window, counting the passing seconds until the next train.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Cas thinks maybe the humidity isn't really all that bad.

“Fancy seeing a guy like you on a rock like this,” calls a familiar voice.

Cas looks up from his book in time to see Sam duck under a low branch and can’t help grinning in response. He came out here half hoping to see Sam again. Well, that, and to stop Gabe from looking at him with his Concerned face.

The woods that edge the river aren’t much of a hike from the Baptist church parking lot from the day before. Trees rise tall and swift along the opposite side of the riverbank, their roots hanging down into the water the only remnants of a bank long eroded by the bend of the river. The bank on this side remains intact, the sand and river rock dotted by oaks that twist themselves out over the water to reach the sun.

“You should come by the town library sometime,” Sam says as he takes a seat on the lichen-covered rock next to Cas. “We’ve got a great selection for a town so small. Some local landowner sponsors the place, and he’s a big anti-censorship proponent.”

At that, Cas instantly perks up. “Where is it?”

“Just off Main, next to the coffee shop. Can’t miss it-- it’s the only coffee shop in town.” Sam waggles his eyebrows. “If you come in on Weekdays before two, I can let you check out over the limit.”

“You work at the library?” Cas asks, more surprised than he should be.

Sam shrugs. “Only during the summer. Dean doesn’t like me working during the school year.”

‘Dean’, Cas assumes, is the previously mentioned brother, so he nods in not-quite understanding. Sam says the name like it’s a given, like of course Cas would know who Dean is if he knows who Sam is. He says it like most people say the name of their spouse, like it’s irrevocably tied to his own. And there’s something under it, interdependence or hero worship or some other complicated emotion Cas has never felt for his own siblings.

“Which is completely stupid,” Sam continues like he’s glad to have someone to rant at. “He was working by the time he was fourteen, labor laws be damned. I tell him that, and he always says, ‘yeah, and look what that got me-- a GED and a job as a mechanic.’ And I just--”

He breaks off abruptly like he realizes he just ventured into incredibly personal territory with someone he barely knows.

Cas nods like he knows what it’s like to have to work to make ends meet and says, “You want to do what you can.”

The silence stretches as Sam squints out over the river. Finally, he lets out a breath and nods. “Dean runs himself ragged trying to keep us above water, and I want to make things a bit easier for him.”

Before this summer Cas had the privilege of not thinking money was important. Gabe has been decidedly middle-class ever since he left the family firm at twenty-two, but considering the cost of food before buying is still new to Cas. He’d never cooked dinner based on what’s on sale or bought the grocery store house brands out of necessity.The only time money doesn’t matter is when you have it, he now realized.

Hell, he’s still new to the concept of sharing a car. He remembers Gabe’s voice when he’d called, furious and desperate to get out of Boston, saying patently, “And Cassy? Leave the car at home.  If you’re going for low-profile, a teenager in a BMW ain’t exactly it. There’s this magical thing called a Greyhound bus that can get you here.”

“Don’t worry,” Cas growled. “I have no intention of driving a car bought with stolen money.”

“Cas…”

“Good bye, Gabriel. I’ll see you in a week.” He hesitated before hitting the end call button, raising his cell phone back to his ear. “And Gabe? Thank you.”

He kept his cell phone only grudgingly, convinced by his cousin that yes, it is a necessity. As are, it turns out, the few clothes he hadn’t taken to Goodwill in his furious purge of all things bought on his family’s bank account. Cas has rewashed the same five sets of clothes he showed up with to the point that they’re all starting to look a little grey around the edges, but he still can’t look at their name-brand labels without feeling sick.

“--Castiel?”

Sam’s voice startles him from his memories. The concerned furrow of Sam’s brow tells him it’s not the first time he’s called his name.

“I apologize,” Cas says. “My mind is prone to wandering lately.”

“Your ‘mind is prone to wandering’?” Sam repeats incredulously. “Dude, you were _gone_. Forget wandering. Your mind grabbed its passport and headed for the border.”

Cas laughs at that-- laughs like he forgot he even could. He knows there’s a hysterical edge to the sound, can feel the tears gathering in the corners of his eyes, but he can’t make himself stop. It feel so good, so out of control, that it’s like the first real breath he’s breathed since he got to North Carolina.

Sam’s eyes are wide with concern, and the suspicion that he’s with a crazy person is evident.

“I apologize,” Cas gasps out. “I’m alright.” He flaps his hand in an ignore-me gesture, but Sam’s expression of mingled concern and amusement only becomes more pronounced. Cas can only laugh harder.

“You okay?” Sam asks slowly.

Cas grabs the edge of the rock to steady himself. “I’m s-so sorry,” he forces out as the laughs subside. “It’s been a trying few months.”

And even though that’s a complete non-answer, Sam seems to understand. He bumps shoulders with Cas and says, “So, tell me what you’re reading.”

Cas marvels at the way Sam takes his eccentricities into stride-- the way he doesn’t shy from the overly formal speech and rolls with his general possibly-on-the-spectrum demeanor. It surprises Cas how refreshing Sam is to talk to. He’s intelligent and well-read without being pretentious. Before Cas even registers the time passing, the sun dips behind the mountains, casting shadows over their rock on the river bank.

“I probably need to head back soon,” Cas says reluctantly. “Tonight is Gabe’s night off, and he’s making dinner.”

“Yeah, same. Dean’ll be here soon.” Sam agrees, standing. He stretches broadly in a way that makes his shirt to ride up and the muscles of his shoulders stand out in sharp relief. Cas’s eyes track the movement, captivated by the flash of skin and strength hidden by his thrift shop clothing. On his tiptoes, finders interlaces above his head, Sam seems even taller than usual, powerful and graceful in a way that Cas has never noticed before.

Sam looks back over his shoulder in time to catch Cas staring, and Cas stumbles for something-- _anything_ \-- to cover the slip. No matter how much he wants to be out and proud, he also doesn’t want to drive off the only person not to look at him through the lens of his family’s corruption.

“You’re impressively tall,” he stumbles out.

Sam glances down at him, eyebrows raised bemusedly. “Yeah, I get that a lot. Dean was so pissed the day he realized I was taller than him. And that was, like, a year ago. I’ve got at least another inch on him since then.”

Sam opens his mouth to say something else, blushes, and closes it again.

Cas bites his lip and lets the accidental innuendo hang. Years of etiquette-class induced self-restraint war with Balthazar’s influence. Two days into knowing someone is a little too early for the dick jokes, no matter what the foul-mouthed trader says.

It’s Sam who breaks the silence. “Do you want to meet here again tomorrow? I mean, if you’ve got nothing else to do.”

“I-- Yes,” Cas says without giving himself enough time to overthink it. “Yes, I’d like that.”

“Awesome!” Sam says with another one of those overly earnest grins.

~*~

Cas stares down at his bowl in consternation. “Is this vegetable soup?”

“It’s chili.” Gabe frowns. “Or so the recipe said.”

“I don’t think chili is supposed to be this--” Cas hesitates. “--soupy.”

“Well, you turned down the Holiday Inn buffet,” Gabe says. “I warned you-- I don’t cook.”

Cas quirks a smile at that. “I notice you didn’t say ‘can’t cook.’”

“‘Anyone can cook--’”

“‘--It’s all just a matter of caring enough to try,’” Cas finishes in his best imitation of Luc’s arrogant drawl.

Gabe looks down at his chili soup. “Yeah,” he says, and pushes himself up from the table under the guise of filling two glasses with tap water.

A pregnant pause follows, and Cas decides that the questionable chili is better than filling it. The first bite is staggeringly awful, but he’s not going to insult food being given to him. The eagerness with which he takes the glass of water may be telling within itself, though.

“Who would’ve thought your brother would end up in prison before mine,” Gabe says, and his voice comes out higher than it should with forced levity.

“Taking little old ladies for their retirement is rather more reprehensible than grifting down the East Coast with-- what’s her name?” Cas snaps his fingers as he thinks. “Bela! That’s it. Bela.”

“Oh, I guess I didn’t tell you. Lucy showed up on my doorstep a couple months ago. Fuck if I know how he got here or got my address.”

Cas furrows his brow. “What?”

Gabe’s smirk is bitterly sardonic. “Yeah. That was my reaction, too. He ditched Bela-- apparently she double crossed him. _Big surprise!_ ” he says, complete with jazz hands. “Now he’s jacking Lamborghinis with some fucker called Crowley.”

“No.”

“Yep,” Gabe says, popping the ‘p’. “In Argentina.”

Cas chuckles because it’s all he _can_ do. His cousin smirks like he understands the lack of real response from experience and takes a bite of his chili.

And slowly spits it back into his bowl.

“Good god, that’s disgusting. I didn’t even know it was possible to fuck up chili that badly.” He wipes at his tongue with his paper towel. “How were you eating that with a straight face? Goddamn, we’re ordering pizza.”

“Does criminality just run in the Novak-Milton line?” Cas calls as Gabe goes in search of the phone.

“Must be the Italian in us. You want breadsticks?” he shouts back. “And bring my my debit card.”

Cas fishes through a drawer for his cousin’s wallet, a small smile playing across his lips. “Our shared line is Czech.”

“Eh, C’est la vie, Cassy,” Gabe says, taking the proffered card. “Anyhow, Anna turned out fine, and you don’t have a corrupt hair on your head.”

“What about you?”

“We both know I’m fucked up. Just not in any way that’d lead to my incarceration.”

Cas raises his eyebrows sarcastically. “I don’t know about that one. I still remember the thing with the habanero and the cookies when I was eight.”

Gabe groans. “Cassy, I was like seventeen,” he wines. “You can’t hold that against me.”

“Gabriel,” Cas says seriously, “I’m seventeen.”

“My god, you are!” his cousin says in mock surprise. “If it wasn’t for the world’s most unobtrusive teen angst, I’d mistake you for forty.”

He ducks to avoid the dishtowel Cas throws at his face.

“That’s my little cous,” he crows. “The anger! The drama!”

“I am taller than you now. You can’t just sit on me to win a fight,” Cas reminds him.

Gabriel just smirks. “Speaking of your teen angst, where’s it gone these past couple day? You’ve been wafting around my house like a bookish ghost ever since you got here, and then suddenly you pop back up yesterday with a sprained ankle, a late car, good mood.” He flails his hand in way that seems to communicate ‘what the fuck’.

“You were right. Fresh air helped. I think maybe I’m starting to adjust.”

“What, to the south or to the idea of your brothers running a ponzi scheme?” Gabe asks, because he’s an asshole like that.

“To the humidity,” Cas answers, because if criminality is genetic, so is being an asshole.

Gabe taps his debut card on the counter as a turns away to hide the fond smile curling his lips. “So, breadsticks. Yes or no?”

~*~

The rumble of the two am freight train jolts Cas awake. His jaw hurts from clenching his teeth, and the bright shards of the dream he’d been having slip away from him like sand. Only fragments of soft hair and green eyes and supple leather linger. He can remember the press of lips and hands and the adrenaline jolt of being discovered.

Rage in Michael’s eyes and fear in his own veins and the sensation of caring hands dissolving into shadow run circles through Cas’s head.

He lets out a harsh breath and reminds himself to breathe. For the first time he’s thankful for the house’s proximity to the train tracks. No matter how often he tells himself that there's nothing wrong with him, that his attraction to men is perfectly natura, years of fearing his brother’s wrath should he find out have left their mark.

When Balthazar first ribbed him two years ago for looking too long at the firm’s new intern, Cas had gone pale and walked away without another word. A week of avoiding Balthazar around the office culminated in Balthazar shoving him into a janitor’s closet and irritably whispering that he was not going to to tell Cas’s religious nut of a brother that he fancied men.

“Bugger who you will,” he had said before tromping back out, dress shoes leaving tracks of the floor cleaner they’d been standing in in his wake.

Cas stands on shaky legs. The hard wood is refreshingly cold under his bare feet as he pads over to the window. He struggles with the painted-shut lock, but the relief of the cool air when he manages to pry it open is immediate.

It’s the first time he’s ever longed for the swell of humid air, Cas realizes. It’s a palpable reminder that he’s not in Boston, that he’s no longer under his brother’s thumb. He presses his cheek to sill and lets the chill leach into his skin as he waits for the whistle of the next train.


	3. Chapter 3

“Do you swim?” Cas asks, nodding at the river.

“Dude, that water’s going to be freezing coming off the mountain,” Sam says incredulously. “Besides, see how fast that current’s moving? They must’ve opened the dam because of the rain last week. It’s too dangerous to go out now. Give it a few days, and it’ll be back to normal.”

Cas doesn't say anything, just strips down to black boxer-briefs and wades out until he’s waist deep. It’s a stupid risk to take, he knows, but he’s been feeling restless and reckless lately. Years of following his brothers’ instructions, doing exactly what he was told, only got him blissful ignorance and a sullied name.

He sinks under the water in one smooth dive, and the bone-chilling cold makes the breath catch in his lungs. He loves the shock of it, the moment when he feels like he might never catch his breath again. You never get that in chlorine-choked pools of city swim clubs.

It’s been a week since he first met Sam; a week of reading in companionable silence and sprawling out on the grass to stare up at the cloudless sky; a week of talking about anything and everything.

They talk about books, about TV, about politics, about Latin declensions-- everything except their lives. Their views, interests, likes and dislikes, yes; but never the day to day workings of their lives. Cas knows Sam is seventeen and has an older brother dean, that they live on the outer edge of town, and that Dean works as a mechanic while Sam attends the local high school.

He’s gathered between the lines that there isn’t any other family around, that they don’t have much money, that they don’t interact much with the rest of the town. He’s seen the way Sam’s boyish eyes can turn hard and the way is giddy smile gets sad at the edges. He’s seen just enough to understand that maybe he isn’t the only one who’d rather keep some things to himself.

Cas swims against the current all the way to the other side and back without stopping to catch his breath.

“Swim team,” he pants out in response to Sam’s open-mouthed stare as he hauls himself back onto the bank.

“Okay, that was seriously dangerous, you ass. Do you have any idea how many people drown each year around here because of idiotic stunts like that?” Sam say, trying to glare at him. The effect is somewhat ruined by the stunned grin spreading across his face.

Cas leans back on his hands, letting the sun filtering through the trees dry the water clinging to his chest. “I merely wanted to demonstrate that I am capable of taking care of myself,” he says primly.

“Yeah, I got that,” Sam says. “Now how about you not do that again, because I’d prefer it if this friendship didn’t end like _Bridge to Terabithia._ ”

Castiel is too distracted by the word “friendship” to reply.

~*~

Cas knows his sporadic sleep pattern as of late should worry him more. He thinks maybe it will, once regular life catches back up, once this humid heat dream of peace ends. Once school starts in two months and the lack of sleep takes its tole on assignments, he doubts his manic happiness will be enough to keep him afloat.

Outside the rain comes down in heavy sheets. Thunder rumbles, and the a brief flash of lightning fills the dark room. Cas presses his palm to the screen. The eaves of the house extend far though that no water comes in through the open window, only the humidity and the scent of ozone.

Boston never got storms like this. There, lightning meant the end of days: seek shelter. Here, there’s no threat, no worry that the wind might blow them away; just the downpour of solidified humidity and summer fronts.

In the distance, barely audible over the clap of thunder and swish of trees, Cas can just make out the train whistle.

~*~

Since that first afternoon, Cas has walked to the river instead of driving. He and Sam tend to get lost in conversation, and he doesn’t want to screw up Gabriel’s work schedule by not having the car home on time. As Sam pointed out, the town is small enough to walk, and Cas is hardly out of shape. More than once Sam challenged him to a race along the path between the water and the woods, determined to beat him on land where he can’t in the water.

All of it, the freedom, the goofing around, the budding friendship, is new to Cas. He’d been part of a swim team, but he enjoyed the freedom swimming offered, not the other teenagers. “Old soul,” Balthazar called him. “Born forty,” the other students at St. Bartholomew’s Academy tended to say. Cas can’t remember ever feeling so young. He’s never run barefoot through the grass with someone his own age, never met another teenager who shares his sense of humor and laughs at his awkward over-read jokes.

But he knows it can’t last. He spends the lulls between the laughter waiting for the other shoe to drop. Finding one person in the continental US who doesn’t currently know and loathe the name Novak has to be impossible, less like finding a needle in a haystack than being told to alchemically craft a needle that doesn’t own a television out of hay.

Cas isn’t disappointed.

Time gets away from them again in favor of a more important discussion. They’re still debating which was the better movie adaptation, _V for Vendetta_ or _Wanted_ , when they step into the church’s parking lot. Cas falters.

There, leaning against his black car with arms crossed over his chest, is Dean Winchester. A scowl covers his face, and despite the relaxed posture, he oozes intimidation in his work boots and leather jacket.

Cas doesn’t know why, but some unnameable quality of the man rattles him bone-deep. Cas has only only seen him through the windshield of the Impala when he picks up Sam, but there's something about the way the man looks at him, something that says he’s capable of unspeakable deeds at odds with the adoration he turns on his brother.

Sam remains unfazed.

“Dean!” He jogs over to his brother and leaves Cas to follow in his wake. “Sorry. Got caught up schooling Cas on movie taste. He thinks _Wanted_ is a better movie than _V for Vendetta_ , but like I was saying, the underlying symbolism and social commentary in _V for Vendetta_ is way better.”

Dean’s face softens at his brother’s geeky diatribe. “ _Wanted_ kicks ass,” he says.

Sam pulls a face. “Right, of course you would think that. I forgot: Angelina Jolie, guns, and explosions.”

“What else does a movie need? Screw symbolism and social commentary.” His gaze shifts over Sam’s shoulder to Cas, green eyes hardening. “So, you’re the Castiel Sammy’s been going on about. He tells me you’re new in town.”

Cas swallows with some difficulty. “Yes.”

“And where are you from, again?” Dean flashes a blatantly fake smile. “I can’t for the life of me remember what Sam said.”

Cas’ stomach drops.

“Boston,” he says breathlessly. All of the oxygen feels like it’s been knocked out of his lungs. Dean’s falsely friendly tone implies more than idle curiosity. _These_ are the reporter questions, politely prying and pointedly directed, the ones that come when someone scents blood.

“Dean!” Sam hisses from between them.

The older man ignored him.

“Castiel Novak,” he says, drawing out each syllable molasses smooth. He uncrosses his arms and takes a step forward from the car. “It’s funny, I think I heard that name on NPR the other day.”

And just like that, Cas knows. This is a cat playing with its dinner.

Sam chuckles nervously, unsubtly trying to defuse the tension. “Since when do you listen to NPR?”

“One of the guys left it on in the garage.” Dean shrugs, never taking his eyes off Cas. “Still, I know I’ve heard that name on the news before.”

He squints like he’s trying to remember the last item on his grocery list, and the look is so patently, infuriatingly false that Cas feels something inside him snap. Passive aggression is nothing new to him, and he refuses to bow to intimidation, never mind the blood rushing in his ears.

His voice drops into a low gravel growl as Dean advances towards him around Sam. “I wouldn’t know. I make a point not to listen to the news anymore.”

“So Boston, huh? Quite a coincidence. I mean, I’ve been hearing a lot about a Michael and Rafael _Novak_ from there.” He smiles even sharper. “Ring leaders of the second biggest Ponzi scheme of the decade, right between Bernie Madoff and Allen Stanford.”

“Dean, don’t be a dick,” Sam says, grabbing his brother’s arm.

“Excuse me,” Cas say, making to walk away. If Dean is going to expose him to Sam, well, fine, but he doesn’t have to stand here while the man intentionally fucks with him.

Dean speaks first. “You should probably stay away from Sammy here,” he says, pretense gone. “You and he both got enough problems on your own.”

There’s a spark in his eyes, cold and calculating and hard enough to shatter diamond. It’s like he would watch the whole world burn so long as his brother was safe, and Cas can’t deal with it right now, won’t fight it when his instincts tell him to flee before this man-- this man who emanates danger like cheap cologne-- causes trouble.

Cas turns his back pointedly on the brothers and set off towards Gabe’s house with as much dignity as he can manage. Every instinct shouts not to turn his back on a threat, but he refuses to look back, even as Sam calls out, “Cas! Man, wait!”

All traces of his carefree youth have fled, replaced by practiced aloofness. He keeps his head high and eyes fixed in front of him, refusing to acknowledge their prickling. It’s pointless now. Dean knows who he is, has known for some time, Cas suspects, and he’ll tell Sam as soon as they get in the car. Cas doesn’t want to hear it, doesn’t want to see the look on Sam’s face when he finds out.

“What the _fuck_ , Dean?!” Cas hears Sam spit. “What the fuck was that? You have no goddamned right to decide--!”

The slam of the car door cuts off the rest of his words.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content Advisory: Brief mention of possible past suicide and suicidal thoughts.

“Sitting around the house angsting really doesn’t suit you, kiddo.”

“Not angsting, Gabriel,” Cas says, not looking up from the book laid open on the kitchen table. The light blue of his scrubs makes Gabe look unnervingly like a responsible adult, and Cas isn’t sure he’s up to dealing with Adult Gabriel today. “I do not angst.”

Gabe rolls his eyes and cocks a hip against the doorframe. “Sulking like the over-emotive teenager you’ve never been, then.” He points his Tootsie Pop at the younger man. “Whatever you wanna call it, it’s oozing all over my kitchen. Seriously, any more and you’ll stain the bamboo.”

Cas looks away from his book long enough to glare at his cousin. Three days have passed since the incident with the Winchesters, and he hasn’t gone back to the river since then, hasn’t even opened Sam’s texts. Whatever is in them-- rage, scorn, condemnation, or a polite ascertain that they can’t be friends-- he really doesn’t have it in him to read just now.

“Jesus.” With a sigh, Gabe pulls out the chair across from Cas. “Look, I’m not here to act like the some surrogate parent because yours were never around. You basically raised yourself, and I know this--” he waves his hands to indicate the whole brothers-running-a-Ponzi-scheme thing, “--hasn’t been easy on you, but I’m here to listen, if you want.”

Silence falls for a long second, and Gabe immediately scrambles to fill it. “I mean,” he continues, “We used to be close before-- before I went to nursing school.”

_ Before he left _ , Cas understands. Back when it had just been the three of them-- Cas, Gabe, and Balth-- pitted against expectation and prejudice. Before Gabriel left and Balthazar overdosed and Castiel learned what reality looks like.

But here Gabe is, trying to act like the adult he’s never been, and maybe it’s a step.

Cas blows out a breath and looks at Gabe with a slight smile. “When did you start acting your age, Gabriel?”

“Don’t get used to it. One time, limited offer, so spill.”

“Last week I met this guy.”

Gabriel’s eyebrows climb towards his hairline.

“I don’t-- That’s not what I--” Cas stumbles.

Then he notices the smirk playing at the edges of his cousin’s lips, and the anxious knot in his stomach untwists itself.

“I retract my previous statement about you acting mature.  _ Anyhow _ , this guy Sam. I liked spending time with him.  He’s intelligent and interesting and kind. ”

“So that’s where you’ve been,” Gabe says with a thoughtful click of the sucker against his teeth. “And here I assumed you were hiding in the woods reading.”

“I was, mostly. There was just another person there most days. Sam and I, we got along well, but then…” Cas trails.

“He figured out.”

Cas shakes his head. “His brother told him. Apparently Sam told him about me, and he put the pieces together.”

“This Sam-- he wouldn’t happen to be Sam Winchester, as in Sam and Dean Winchester, would he?”

“How’d you know?” he asks with a tilt of his head.

“Oh, boy,” Gabe says, leaning back in his chair. “Christ, leave it to you to befriend one of the Winchesters.”

“What do you mean? Gabe, what’re you talking about?”

“Let me guess, you and Sam became fast friends because you both have the interests of a middle-aged professor and no other friends your own age,” Gabe recites in a flat sing-song.

Cas blinks, confused. “Yes. How did you--”

A groan interrupts him. Gabriel collapses forward onto the table, face in his hands.

“Cassy, it’s like you have some sort of radar. Instead of gaydar you come equip with  trouble dar,” he says and then pauses. “That made more sense in my head, but you still get the point.”

“No, Gabriel. I very much do not ‘get the point.’” Cas can feel his voice lowering in agitation and doesn't bother trying to curb the response. “Now would you please explain what you’re talking about?”

“Let’s just say that Sam’s a grade-A hypocrite if he jumped ship over unfounded rumors.”

“He didn’t,” Cas says, oddly defensive of Sam. “His brother did.”

And maybe, a part of him argues, Sam wouldn’t have. Maybe Cas jumped the gun, was too defensive as always. Maybe he should have given Sam a chance.

Gabe sighs and rubs his forehead.  “Look, Castiel, I’m not going to say you shouldn’t be friends with Sam, but the Winchester brothers keep to themselves for a reason.”

“You’re being unduly cryptic.”

The shorter man sighs longsufferingly and pushes his chair back from the table with an intentional grating scrape. “Look, Kiddo, I gotta’ get to work,” he says, clipping his hospital ID to his pocket. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

Cas knows they won’t-- knows that they never do, and makes a frustrated noise when Gabriel affectionately ruffles his hair on his way out. ‘The Morning’ is a mystic time that seems to exist outside Gabriel’s scope of perception and thus serves as the place where all unwanted conversations get pushed. Gabriel’s defection from the family, his lack of communication with Balthazar, and apparently, the Winchesters.

Cas thumbs his phone on and stares at the little red 4 next to the message icon. Reluctantly, he clicks the first unread message.

_ Castiel, I’m so sorry about what happened. –SW _

_ My brother is a jerk. –SW _

_ Please, I just want to talk. –SW _

_ I don’t care.  –SW _

The last message hangs on the screen like a taunt until the phone times out.

Cas stares at the black screen for several minutes before he finally types back,  _ I’m sorry. _

He lays the phone face down on the table and goes back to rereading  _ Snow Crash,  _ determined not to think about how inadequate the words looked.

That is, until a knock echos through the house a half-hour later. Orange light from the setting sun filters in through the windows. Seven is too late for UPS; maybe Gabe forgot his keys again. Cas pads to the front door, bare feet barely making a sound on the wood floor, and opens it with some hesitation.

There on the other side of the screen door stands Sam, hands in the pockets of his worn jeans and shoulders folded forward.

“Cas!” he says, looking relieved.

“Samuel,” Castile says wearily.

“I thought-- Well, you didn’t show up, and wouldn’t answer my texts, so I thought…” He breaks off then shakes his head. “Can I come in?”

Cas hesitates, one hand on the door’s faded paint.

“Please. I just want to talk.” Sam’s eyes go pleading. “What do you think I’m going to do?”

Cas sighs but pushes the screen door open. “Physical violence is not unheard of.”

“I wouldn’t-- Jesus, Cas, I already knew,” Sam says.

Cas freezes. “What?”

“I followed the trial while it was going on. Dean didn’t have to tell me.” Sam makes to reach a hand towards Cas but falters halfway through the movement. “At first I thought your name was just a coincidence, but then everything you said fit what I’d heard about the youngest Novak.”

A sheepish look passes over Sam’s face as he continues, “I may have, um, Googled you-- just to know for sure! I didn’t read anything, I swear. Well, nothing I hadn’t already read. But there was this picture of you in your school uniform being chased by reporters and photographers. You were, um, trying to hold a notebook in front of your face, but I could still tell it was you.”

Of course Sam would be a news junkie. Cas holds in a derisive snort as he asks, “Was it curiosity?”

Now it’s Sam’s turn to look confused. “Huh?”

“Were you curious if my professed ignorance of my brother’s actions was genuine?”

“During the trial you said you didn’t know what they were up to. I believed you then, and I believe you now,” Sam says, and this time he does put a hand on Cas’s shoulder. “I think that you’re too good of a person.”

“Why?” Cas asks, voice breaking on the word. “No one else does. No one else believes that I could possibly have not known, living under their roof.”

There’s silence while Cas waits for Sam’s explanation.

Finally, Sam says, “You’re not the only one who knows what it’s like to have someone pretend to be your friend to get information. I know you don’t have any reason to trust me, but I’d never do that, especially not to you. This entire town thinks--”

He breaks off. He looks frantic around the edges, eyes desperate and sad, older than they should be. “Well, let’s just say I know what it’s like to have people talk about you.” Sam looks away. “I know what rumors can do. My brother is an overprotective ass, but he has reasons to worry about who I trust.”

“What rumors could possibly rival most of the country believing you were complacent in ruining the lives and stability of hundreds, maybe even thousands?” Cas asks with more force than strictly necessary. He turns away with a sardonic laugh. “You’re one of the most unquestionably kind people I have ever met. What rumors could you possibly inspire?”

“Do we really need to talk about this?” Sam’s expression turns pained as he runs a hand back through his hair.

Guilt clutches at the shorter man’s stomach and evaporates his anger. Whatever people say about Sam clearly isn’t something he’s comfortable discussing. Cas looks down at his bare feet, small next to Sam’s worn sneakers. “I apologize. You have not pried into my involvement with my brothers; I should’ve extended you that same courtesy.”

Sam lets out a shaky breath. “No, it’s-- You have a right to know if you’re going to be seen with me.”

“It doesn’t matter. Whatever you’ve done, whatever people think you’ve done, makes no difference to me,” Cas says firmly. “The person you are-- that’s what matters.”

Sam ducks his head and seems to have no response to that.

“Let me take you out to dinner,” he says at last.

Cas furrows his brow, tilting his head to one side without meaning to.

“As an apology!” Sam adds hurriedly, evidently realizing how the initial offer sounded. “For Dean being a dick. Let us get you pizza or something.”

Cas is too caught off guard to pay attention to the ‘us’ part. All he knows is, Sam knows who he is, and yet Sam is still here, asking him out to apology pizza. Cas Says the only thing he can--

“I-- Yes,” he nods too hard. “I’d like that.”

Sam grins. “Awesome! Let’s go.”

“Now?”

“Why not?” Sam shrugs. “You got any other plans for the night?”

Cas shakes his head, because no, his book will still be here in the morning.

“Then grab some shoes,” Sam says.

Cas obeys. He shoves his feet in the battered black loafers next to the door and darts back into the kitchen long enough to grab his jacket off the back of a chair. He follows Sam out of the house, barely remembering to lock the door behind him. They walk towards the Impala side by side, but Cas’s steps stutter when he sees Dean in the driver’s seat.

“It’s okay,” Sam reassures. “He and I had a long discussion about all the things he’s not allowed to decide for me.”

“Like whether you’re allowed to be friends with me?”

Sam huffs. “He might more or less be my guardian, but he doesn’t get to decide what can and can’t do. That’s our agreement.”

It’s nothing Cas hadn’t already guessed, but the conformation that Dean is his brother’s guardian is another piece to the puzzle that is the Winchesters. He wonders what Sam means by “more or less” but he’s too polite to ask.

“Agreement?” he asks instead.

“That I’m not the one with the good judgement between the two of us,” Dean calls from the rolled-down car window, startling both of them. “You two gonna’ get your asses in the car any time tonight?”

Sam gives gives brother a distinctly bitchy face but holds open the back door for Cas to slides across the bench seat. To his surprise, Sam climbs in next to him instead of going to sit up front. So quick that Cas almost missed it, Dean glares at his brother in the rearview and Sam smirks back.

The exchange is such a non sequitur that Cas isn’t sure what it means, isn’t even entirely sure he really saw it. 

“Yeah, we both know I’m the only one capable of making rational choices,” Sam says with a smirk.

Dean flips him off without looking back as he pulls out the drive.

The ride into town is mostly silent, with Sam trying to bridge the awkwardness on occasion. All he gets is a grunt in response from Dean and a choked monosyllable from Cas, so he gives up before they’re even halfway there.

Cas feel awkward sitting in the back of the Impala, like he’s an intruder in the Winchesters’ lives. It’s the sort of awkward he feels around long-term couples going about their domestic routine, like he’s stepped in and interrupted something essential yet unexciting. He always got the feeling around Anna and her fiance when he visited for dinner, watching the two work in silent tandem to prepare food while he sat at the bar, uncomfortable with not being allowed to help.

“I didn’t know Sam already knew who you-- who your family is,” Dean says abruptly.

It takes a second for the words to sink in, and then Cas understands--

“That’s as close to an apology as you’re ever going to get from him,” Sam says, and it’s confirmation of what Cas suspected. Sam says it in a way that speaks of a lifetime of experience, both fond and frustrated.

Dean doesn’t look away from the road to acknowledge the words, just puts on his blinker and pulls into what can loosely be called a strip mall. Johnny's Pies & Pasta is flanked by a Zumba studio and a pet groomer offering “crystal energy healings”. Cas wonders idly if the healings are for the pets or if there’s a side business for humans run out of the same shop.

Even with the sun mostly gone, the weather is just as sweltering as ever when Cas steps out of the car. Here, the humidity holds the summer heat to the earth for hours after sunset, and Cas finds himself longing for places where shade means cooler temperatures. Cas bets that the black car burns hot as hell under the midday sun.

Cas trials the brothers across the parking lot, watching the easy sync of their movements, the way Sam easily bumps their shoulders and Dean thoughtlessly holds the door. They’re more comfortable with each other than Cas has ever been with his own brothers, and the ease of it fascinates him. He’s even more fascinated when he sees Sam thump his brother on the chest and simultaneously slip Dean’s wallet out of his back pocket without him giving any sign that he’s noticed.

“Hi,” Sam says with a charming smile to the cashier.

The man takes a moment to register that there’re customers. “Hey, what can I get ya?” he says after a long blink.

“We’ll have a large meat lover’s and a large veggie with sausage.” Sam looks at Cas. “Is one of those good with you?”

Cas nods.

Sam pays with a card from the wallet he swiped, easily forging his brother’s signature. Dean hangs back and watches with his hands in his pocket. He plucks his wallet from Sam’s hand as they go to find a seat.

“You’re getting better,” Dean says.

“Yeah, any you’re getting sloppy,” Sam says as he takes a seat at a table next to his brother. “Now give me my phone, jerk.”

Dean obligingly produces a cell phone Cas hadn’t even seen him take.

Cas wants to ask, but thinks better of it. There’s so many small things about the Winchesters that captivates him, and he can feel the threat of a burgeoning obsession. Sam alone had been a fascination, but the brothers together threaten to spiral into a fixation.

He knows the feeling, has known it for as long as he can remember. He thought it was limited to media, but if the feeling swelling in his chest is anything to go by, that might not be the case. He wonders if this is how stalkers are born and resolves never to find out. 

He can still remember being eleven and having Michael walk into the living room only to sigh out, “Oh goddamn. Not  _ The Road to El Dorado _ again. What is this, the fiftieth time?”

He remembers Gabe, twenty and still obligingly watching the kid’s movie on the couch next to him, getting up to drag Michael into the kitchen. “It’s a coping mechanism,” he remembers overhearing Gabe says. “Kids do it-- they fixate on things they like, especially kids on the autistic spectrum.”

It was the first time Cas heard the word “autistic” in relation to himself. He knew the autistic boy in the year below him, the one who was older than him, and he couldn’t reconcile the image with his conception of himself. He didn’t know there was a spectrum, wouldn’t know until some years later that Gabe suspected he has Asperger’s Syndrome or something akin to it.

To this day Cas doesn’t know for sure. He’s never been tested, and of course Michael would never let him be. But somehow the mere idea that may be an explanation for why he was different from his peers had been a comfort.

“What’re you trying to imply?” Michael has hissed. “There’s nothing wrong with Castiel.”

“No, there isn’t,” Gabe bit out. “Whether he’s on the spectrum or not, there's nothing wrong with Cassy.”

“Get out.”

After that, Gabe hadn’t come over to Novak house more than necessary, had started dragging Cas along to the family firm even though it was no place for a child. Perhaps it said everything that Cas prefered being around the firm and its foul-mouthed traders to being confined to his own house that was never really a home.

He realizes he’s been staring when Sam says something trivial about Johnny's being the best-- and only non Pizza Hut-- pizza in town. Dean remains silent next to his brother, eyes casually tracing the width of the room. Cas throws himself into the small talk, lets the conversation drift over baniel things he usually tries to avoid having to talk about. He always answers a little too honestly, a little too bluntly; he’s never quite grasped the concept of asking if you don’t want the truth.

How does he like North Carolina? It’s humid but it’s not Boston, so it’s good enough.

Does he know what he wants to study at college? Not yet, but not finance.

Does he miss his friends from Boston?

Cas pauses at that question. “I only had one friend in Boston.”

“A school friend?” Sam asks.

Cas smiles. “He worked at my family’s firm. Balthazar was an absolute asshole.”

“Yeah? Do you still talk to him?”

Cas’s smile fades, and he looks down at where his hands are clasped in his lap. “After the-- after the scandal, he overdosed.”

Cas doesn’t say that he still doesn't know if it was on purpose, doesn’t say that he wished for the longest time that he’d been there, but whether to stop it or join, he still doesn’t know.

He doesn’t say he’d been the one to find him, the mostly empty bottle of Xanax still on the coffee table.

He doesn’t say the before he called the ambulance he knew would be a day too late, he stared at the orange bottle and wondered if there was still enough left in it.

Silence falls, and Sam offers a soft, “I’m sorry.”

Cas almost offers an apology in response, realizing he’s effectively squashed the conversation. Instead, he says, “Thank you.”

Dean’s leg bounces up and down where he sits, like the sudden added tension of the conversation is too much for him on top of whatever had him tense before. The nervous energy of it has Cas’s spine straighter than usual. Sam’s hand drifted to Dean’s side, knuckles brushing the edge of his brother’s thigh. Almost instantly, the bouncing stopped.

“Not helping,” Dean hissed. Again, a whole conversation passes in a look shared between the brothers. They’re on the same page without words, and there’s a whole layer of hidden memories just below the surface of their eyes.

But it’s more than that, Cas realizes.

He hadn’t noticed it before, wrapped up in talking to Sam as he was, but the entire restaurant has a feeling of hush to it. And Cas thinks maybe he feels it, too-- an underlying nervous tension that pervades the pizza shop.

Across the poorly lit room, he swears he sees heads turning in their direction, the murmur of whispers. He  _ knows _ he sees a wine-mom with bottle blond hair the color of straw lean in to whisper something to her friend. A few booths over, a dark haired girl chewing gum doesn’t even bother to pretend she isn’t staring, a smirk curling her lips as she track their movements.

Cas stares back with a furrowed brow. He ignores years of Gabe telling him, “stop staring-- you’re being creepy again” in favor to fixing her with a reproachful head tilt. He doesn’t know what’s going on, just knows that it’s making the Winchesters uncomfortable and that he won’t tolerate it. The girl’s eyes catches Cas’s, and she blows a bubble, gaze unabashedly holding his.

As if in response, Dean’s thumb starts to rattle a a nervous tattoo against the plastic chair.

“Dean,” Sam says in an undertone.

Dean surges from his seat. “Fuck this,” he mutters, crossing the space to the counter in three quick steps. “Excuse me.”

The board looking twenty-something behind the counter looks up. “Huh?”

“Yeah, I’d like to change my order to to-go.”

“Umm--” The guy behind the counter starts, brow furrowing.

“Look, it’s not that complicated,” Dean says with exaggerated patience. “Just slap the pizzas into a box instead of onto a tray. I’ll pay extra if I need to.”

The man shakes his head as if trying to pull himself out of a stoned stupor. “Nah, nah. It’s fine, man. I got it.”

“You’re a champ,” Dean says, slipping a five into the empty tip jar.

Sam lets out a huff. “Was that really necessary?” he asks as Dean reclaims his seat.

“Dude, even your awkward little choir boy here is getting uncomfortable.” Dean stretches in a way that’s more forced than languid. “If I’m paying for pizza, I’m going to enjoy it-- meaning not here.”

“You’re still an asshole.”

Dean very pointedly scratches his nose with his middle finger in response.

Cas knows there’s something that’s not being given voice, and he knows on instinct not to address it head own. So, instead, he addresses the part of Dean’s words he can.

“I can pay for my own pizza. It’s not a problem.”

“He’s buying you pizza as an apology for being a dick,” Sam says, giving his brother no room to accept. “So, just where do you plan on us eating if not here, oh wise ass?”

Dean shrugs with forced nonchalance. “Back to the house, I figured.”

Surprise flits across Sam’s face. “Really?”

“Not unless you have any better ideas,” Dean says. He doesn’t exactly look happy.

When the cashier calls their number, they make their way back out to the Impala with the pizzas. This time Sam sits up front with Dean, and they split the bench seat between them so they’re close enough for their shoulders to brush when Sam leans into a turn. The look Dean throws his brother is somewhere between  _ fuck off _ and  _ thank you _ .

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For me prattling on in an author's note, [look here on my tumblr](http://oppisum.tumblr.com/post/141805382931/zero-sum-chapter-4). It has more details about the not-so-fictional setting and my possibly-on-the-spectrum!Cas.


	5. Chapter 5

They drive out past the edge of town, over the train tracks and past the curve of the river through the valley. It’s further out of town than Cas has ventured so far, an area where not all of the street lights work and the weeds in the ditches remain uncut. The brothers are silent. Each passing streetlight casts their faces in an orange glow and highlights the tight lines around Dean’s eyes.

They pass a few buildings with caving ceilings that have seen better days and a run-down trailer park that probably hasn’t. A woman in pajama pants with mussed hair and a cigarette cranes her head to watch as the car passes.

Dean turns off onto a gravel road where the only illumination is the car’s headlights.

When the car stops, it takes Cas a moment to realize that the building they’re parked in front of isn’t a utility shed. Up front, Sam fidgets and Dean’s jaw is clenched, and abruptly Cas understands why Sam has never mentioned where they live.

The house is less a house and more the sort of tin-roofed shack Cas always pictured reclusive mountain men living in. The vinyl siding suggest that it might once have been a camper that sprouted roots and took up residency on the plot of land. It’s clearly been added to over the years-- a car shelter, a built-on room, and a screened-in front porch.

It’s small and battered, but well kept. The tomato bushes that fill the flower beds are mostly weed-free, and the sycamore trees have been trimmed back so that doesn’t hang over the roof. There’s a plastic bird feeder littering sunflower seeds on the ground and an even more plastic bird bath held down with half cinder blocks.

Cas follows them inside without a word, watches as Sam stops the screen door from smacking his brother while he fumbles his keys. Once they’re in, Dean flicks on the lights. The metal-walled inside of the front room suggest that this might have once been the outside, and the ceiling is low enough that Sam would hit his head if he jumped.

The house is small-- less than a thousand square feet and narrow enough that Cas could cross it in five steps, front door to back. From the kitchen he can see directly into a bedroom almost entirely taken up by a queen bed, barely enough room left to walk around it. Dean empties his pockets onto the kitchen counter as Sam sets the pizza boxes on the table.

Sam scratches his neck. “It’s really only held together with elbow grease.”

“It’s lovely,” Cas says, meaning it. It’s a home; maybe not the nicest, but a home nonetheless.

The furniture is a mismatched hodgepodge of hand-me-downs-- a saggy futon, an old recliner, a grandma-style buffet table Cas suspects was built into the house. An old Zenith record player too decrepit to be called “vintage” sits on one corner, empty cassette cases and issues of _Spin_ scattered next to it.

Sam huffs like Cas’s words are funny. “You should’ve seen it when we first moved in,” he says, gesturing to the walls painted a cheerful red. “The old lady who owned it before stuck this hideous flower contact paper to the walls instead of wallpaper. We had to peel it all off by hand before we could do anything.”

“We?” Dean says as he grabs a piece of pizza and eats half of it in one bite. “That was all you, bitch. I would've lived with the stuff, but your prissy ass stayed up until one am peeling it off.”

Sam makes a face. “I was fourteen, and the pattern gave me a headache. Also, you’re disgusting.”

“You love me. And that was back when the satellite was jacked up and the only stations we got were TLC, Hallmark, and USA.” Dean points the crust at Cas, talking around his last bite. “Do you know how many episodes of _What Not to Wear_ and _I love Lucy_ I had to watch?”

“ _I Love Lucy_ was all your doing, and you know it.” Sam pulls a paper towel off the roll and presses it into his brother's hand. “Quit trying to scare off Cas with your gross eating habits.

Cas takes the seat next to Sam and offers a small “thank you” when he’s handed a paper plate.

“I missed lunch today, so I think I get to eat like a barbarian if I want to.”

Sam pauses with his slice halfway to his mouth. “You skipped lunch?”

“ _Missed_ , not skipped,” Dean corrects, like there’s some important distinction between the two. From the look on Sam’s face, Cas thinks maybe there is. “I got caught up working on an overtime job, and before I knew it, it was three. No use buying lunch when I knew we were going for pizza. Got plenty of money-- just didn’t feel like spending it.”

A little worry line is still visible between Sam’s eyebrows, but he nods like the answer is good enough. He starts to sat something else, but the words cut off in his throat when Cas bows his head.

Cas mouths the words of the prayer to himself as quickly as he can manage it, eyes not even closed all the way. The silence is only broken by the rattle of the window unit. When he looks back up, it’s to find both brothers staring at him in open-mouthed surprise. Hear creeps up his neck, unbidden.

Across the table, Dean’s wide eyes clearly communicate ‘crazy person’ to his brother, and there’s a thump as Sam kicks him under the table. “I didn’t know you were religious,” Sam says, and it manages not to be an accusation.

“Not particularly.” Cas takes a bite of his pizza to keep from fidgeting. He doesn’t say that he’s somewhere between lapsed and willfully walking away because of _irreconcilable differences_. Instead, he simplifies. “It’s force of habit. Both my school and my family were quite stringently Catholic.”

“It that that’s with the church clothes? Some sort of--” Dean waves his hand. “--religious thing?”

Cas looks down at what he’s wearing like it might somehow have changed; black slacks and a white button down, the two closer in color than they should be from too many washes.

“It was my old school uniform. It’s all I had clean,” Cas says. He doesn’t say that he clumsily unstitched the school crest from the shirt a few weeks back so he could wear it.

“Dean!” Sam hisses.

“Sam, can I talk to you for a minute,” Dean says, and it’s not a question.

Sam hesitates but says “Yeah, sure,” with an enthusiasm that Cas knows is fake. He stands from the table and follows Dean out the back door.

The house is small enough that moving outside makes no difference. Cas means to give the brothers their privacy, he really does, but the window overlooking the back stoop is rolled out and the whir of the air conditioner isn’t enough to drown out Dean’s words.

“Dude, what’re you thinking? This guy is so straight laced I’m surprised he can breathe.”

“He’s my friend,” Sam snaps. “You’re not required to like him.”

“That’s not what this is about, and you know it.”

“I don’t know, Dean; what is this about?” Sam’s voice is mocking, harsher than Cas has ever heard it. “You’re the one who brought him here.”

“What was I supposed to do, sit there while people whisper?”

“Maybe they wouldn’t whisper so much if they actually saw us in town once in awhile.”

“Look, we’re only a step up from dirt floor poor. What, exactly, do you expect? We grew up in a single wide and he grew up with a silver spoon stuck in his mouth.”

“Is that you issue?” Sam asks incredulously. “That he’s used to having money?”

“My issue is that your little friend there is a choir boy in church clothes who prays over his food! You’re playing with fire, Sam. There’s no way he won’t hear the things people say.”

“And? I’m not going to live my life worrying about what people think they know.”

Dean’s voice softens. “I’m not telling you to. You just gotta’ be careful, is all I’m saying. I don’t want to see you get hurt. He’s a good kid, I get that, but that might be the problem. There’s no way him coming into our lives and our house doesn’t end badly. You just need to think about that.”

Sam’s silence is enough of a reply.

Hurt aches in Cas’s chest. He doesn’t think it’s asking too much, just to be given the chance to have a friend. He can barely muster the energy to wonder what kind of trouble Dean thinks Cas is going to bring down on them. Dean won’t even give him a chance because he grew up with money, because of the family he was born into.

Cas thinks he should hold his tongue as the brothers come back inside, thinks he would have, in his previous life. Once, he would have politely finished his dinner, helped clean up, and then left with a thank you. But as much as he wants this friendship with Sam to work, he’s done apologizing for who he is.

He stands, pushing his chair in. “I believe I need to leave.”

Sam’s face falls. “Oh, I mean, you’re welcome to stay.”

“No, I don’t think I am,” Cas says, looking over Sam’s shoulder at Dean. He starts to walk off without another word, but something stops him. Something about the steal in Dean’s eyes makes him want to fight back, that determination that Cas will only ever be what his family made him.

So Cas turns back, looking at Dean and Dean alone. “If you have a problem with me, say it to me. Do not make it your brother’s problem. I pray because I’m lost. I’m lost in my own religion, in my own family, and in my own head. I don’t even know to whom I pray, but I still hold hope that someone out there gives a damn.”

Dean looks taken aback by the directness, but Cas continues, “I wear my ‘church clothes’ because they’re all I have since I left home. My school uniform was provided by the scholarship I earned, not my brothers’ money. I may have grown up with a silver spoon stuck in my mouth, as you put it, but do not dare assume that you know what my life looked like.”

Cas lets his voice sink into the low gravel growl that he knows unnerves people. “I owe you no explanation; I do not need your approval, but I want to be friends with your brother, and if that means putting up with you belittling and insulting me, then so be it.”

Dean’s expression can almost be called reluctantly impressed. “At least you’ve got balls to go with that stick up your ass.”

Cas feels himself inflating like an indignant pigeon. “I do not have a stick up my--”

“Look.” Dean cuts him off. “I’m a dick. Just ask Sammy; he’ll tell you until he’s blue in the face. But he and I are a package deal. You want to be friends with Sammy? Great, but you get his overprotective dick of a brother, too.”

Sam presses the heels of his hands to both eyes. “This is why I don’t have friends.”

“Bitch, you don’t have friends because your main hobby is sitting in the woods emoting while you read Virginia Woolf,” Dean says without missing a beat.

Sam eloquently flips him off.

Dean sighs. “ _But_ , you seem to have found someone to read and emote with you.” He squints at Cas. “Well, I don’t know about the emoting part. Not sure this one does much emoting. My point is, Sam doesn’t need my approval or permission to be friends with anyone.”

Dean shoulders past Cas into the kitchen and starts washing his glass in the sink. “Hell, I’m not even telling you not to come round the house,” he says over the running water. “If you’re comfortable with the state of squalor we live in, that is.”

Cas grits his teeth. “And I suppose I merely have to get used to your backhanded insults-- all under your professed ‘dickishness,’ of course?”

Dean sets down the scrub brush like he thinks he might use it as a projectile otherwise and braces his hands on the edge of the sink. “Do you have to talk like that?”

Cas blinks. “Talk like what?”

“Like you’re getting ready to proclaim the end of days! You’re somewhere between too formal and telling me I’m going to hell.”

And Cas-- Cas can’t come up with a response to that. He remembers going to school for the first time after his mother’s death and years of her homeschooling. He remembers the curious stares of the other students, the way one of the girls asked, “Why do you talk like that? Don’t make up words.”

Cas hadn’t been making up words-- he’d just been using the words he knew, which were apparently a little longer and stranger than the words the other kids knew. He remembers the way they looked at him every time he spoke, students and teachers alike-- when an elementary school student opened his mouth and solemn, four dollar words came out.

He remembers that he stopped speaking almost entirely by the end of that year.

Sam is shouting, Cas realizes. Sam is yelling, and he’s so lost in his own head that he can hardly hear it.

“--jelousy issues! Goddammit, Dean, you don’t say shit like that to p--”

Cas knows his face is empty-- not expressionless, not blank, but eerily empty, like nothing’s looking out. He’s seen the expression in Michael, has seen it on his mother, has seen it looking back at him from the mirror. He know how bad it is, but he can’t seem to do anything about it.

He didn’t mean to do this, didn’t mean to start a fight.

Dean looks like he doesn’t hear Sam’s words, his eyes fixed on Cas. His face isn’t empty, Cas thinks enviously. His forehead is wrinkled in concern, and his mouth is a tight line.

“--oes it make you feel better to prove everyone right? Does i--”

Dean snaps his fingers, and the noise ring through the kitchen like a shot. “Sam,” he says, once, hard, and Sam silences instantly.

Dean advances on Cas, but there’s no menace this time, no overblown swager. He places a light hand on his shoulder, guides him to a chair. Cas goes without protest. The numbness is fading, the detachment ebbing.

And in its wake Cas is mortified to realize he’s just had A Moment in his only friend’s kitchen.

He looks down at his lap as Dean crouches in front of him.

“I’m sorry,” Dean says softly. The words are quiet, gentle even, and it’s such a contrast to the brash man Cas has seen so far. “I didn’t know that was a thing for you, and I’m sorry.”

Cas can only shake his head, still too embarrassed to make eye contact. He feels seven all over again. “It’s not-- i-it’s been a long day,” he finally manages to stutter out. He’s not going to say it’s not Dean’s fault, but he’s not willing to say it is, either.

“Hey, look at me,” Dean says, still in that painfully gentle voice that makes Cas want to forget all of the dickishness. He puts a hand on Cas’s knee, the touch steady and warm and surprisingly reassuring.

Cas does look up then. This close, Dean is even more gorgeous that he initially thought-- tan with freckles from working in the sun, but with features too beautiful for someone so pervasively masculine. There’s kindness in his eyes now under the concern. From the way Sam regards his brother, Cas suspects it’s always been there, hidden somewhere under all the assholery.

Sam moves to stand behind him, leaning against the back of his chair. His large palms move to Cas’s shoulders. Cas can feel the warmth of them, and for a moment, just a moment, he can imagine that he belongs here, with Sam’s hands on his shoulders and Dean’s on his knees.

But it’s only wishful thinking, he knows. Here, now, in this godforsaken Bible-thumping state, he’s more alone than he’s ever been. He has Gabe, cagier and more defensively sarcastic than the last time Cas saw him three years earlier, but he doesn’t _have_ him, not really, not the way he expected when he first decided to come live with him. Something about his cousin has changed since he left the family cluster, something that’s made him older than his years.

He refuses to talk about the company or Michael or Balthazar, and really, what else is there between them? Gabe has determinedly left behind everything he used to be, and it’s left Cas grasping to find steady ground.

Cas wants to do the same-- to leave behind everything he was and has ever been and start over again-- but he doesn’t think he can, doesn’t believe that’s how it works. He’ll always be shaped by his past, even if he’s more than what his family made him. Free from his brother’s overbearing grasp, he’ll be his own person in this new life. He’ll stop letting family duty decide what he does and who he can be. But he won’t forget, doesn’t think he _should_ forget.

“How about this.” Dean’s voice breaks Cas’s thoughts and drags him back to the tiny kitchen. “I’ll try to restrain dickishniss and you try to prove me wrong. Deal?”

Cas hates the pity he hears in the words, hates the way he’s suddenly become something delicate to the brothers. He’s spent years proving that he’s not breakable, and just like that it’s all shattered. He’s maybe a little shattered, too.

He can feel the crack starting to form as the facade he’d crafted to get through the trial threatens to break apart and leave him raw. So he nods.

“I believe that is agreeable,” he says, forcing his voice to cooperate by sheer willpower.

Sam’s hands tighten on his shoulders at almost the exact same moment as Dean’s do the same on his knees. In the distance, Cas can make out the whistle of the train, this time from the other side of the tracks, and he wonders if that means something.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, [here's a link to the soundtrack that actually works](http://8tracks.com/oppisum/zero-sum-a-wincestiel-au). Thank you to a fantastic reader for pointing out that I mistyped the link.

Cas shuts off the car and stares out the at the full parking lot. It takes a long moment to steady himself, hands still clenched on the steering wheel. He forces his breathing to deepen, focusing on breathing from his stomach instead of his chest. The task at hand is dunting, but Gabe needs him.

Steeling his courage, he thumps his palms on the wheel. He can do this.

He unfolds himself from the small car and stares up at the bright red Ingles sign.The facade of the grocery store looks like the entrance to his personal hell. Grocery stores are so overwhelming-- to many people, so much to take in at once.

Gabriel wouldn’t have asked him to go buy groceries if he’d known how nervous the stagnant crowds make his little cousin, but Cas refuses to be any more of a burden. Even if anyone would hire him, Gabe doesn’t want Cas working so close to the end of the trial. So, Gabe has an extra mouth to feed on a nurse’s salary, and no amount of him telling Cas not to worry about it will stop him from feeling guilty. The least he can do is go grocery shopping.

Inside the automatic doors and past the quarter prize machines, he bypasses the carts and grabs a basket. Even if a cart would be more practical for the amount he has to buy, it’d slow him down, trap him even more thoroughly in the midst of the crowd.

He speeds through the store as quickly as he reasonably can, grabbing item after item on his list before he has time to get mired down in the stimuli. A middle-aged woman harrumphs at him when he breezes past. He’s managing perfectly well until he gets to the soup aisle. He stalls out, staring at a shelf stacked well above his head with cans. Why, he wonders, are there so many variants of canned soup.

“Hey,” a female voice says from somewhere to his left. “You’re Gabriel's cousin, right?”

Cas turns and is met with a girl roughly his age. Her black hair falls in elegant sheets, and the curve of her painted-red lips is a little too seductive for his liking. She’s familiar, but he’s not sure from where.

“I’m Ruby.” She tilts her head and licks her lips. “And you’re Cassiel.”

“Castiel,” he corrects. “How do you know I’m related to Gabe?”

She shrugs carelessly. “Small town. Big church. Strange name,” she says and smirks. “So is it true?”

Of course. He should have guessed.

“Is what true?” he asks, turning back to stare at the soup. Tomato is on sale, but he prefers cream of mushroom.

What he doesn’t expect is for her to say, “What they say about Sam Winchester.”

Cas looks back at her. “I’m sorry?”

“You know,” she says, voice dripping with exasperation, “That he’s fucking his brother.”

Cas chokes on his surprised inhale. “Excuse me, what? I think I misunderstood you,” he coughs out.

“I saw you out with them the other night. Don’t tell me you haven’t heard.”

She blows a bubble with her gum, and suddenly Cas remembers. She’s the girl from the pizza shop. He stares back at her, unable to string together a coherent sentence.

“You haven’t!” She leans forward excitedly like she has a secret to share, her hair falling to one side of her face like a black curtain. This close, Cas can see just how wide her pupils are blown. “They say Sam Winchester’s been screwing his brother for years. Like, at least since we were freshman. I’ve gone to school with him for five years, and boy let me tell you, I believe it. Those two aren’t quite right, if you know what I mean.”

“No.” It’s the only word Cas can force out.

“Oh come on, you have to have noticed the way they act with each other.”

Cas wants to argue, wants to protest, but her words bring forth all the little things he’s noticed-- the subtext of so many wordless communications, Dean’s words to Sam about being careful around Cas, Sam’s words about not wanting to live in fear of what people say. Cas shakes his head like he’s coming up from water.

It’s not true.

It can’t be true.

Ruby snorts inelegantly. “I know you’re from some hoity-toity Catholic school up North and that your family fucked over a bunch of people, but I’ll tell you now, with what they say about the Winchesters, you’re pretty low on this tiny town’s list of scandals. Keep hanging around with them, and nobody’ll care why you’re here.”

She reaches past him to snag the last can of cream of mushroom. She tosses the can into the air playfully and wiggles her fingers at him before sidling off down the aisle.

All Cas can think, in his shocked state, is that it looks like he’s having tomato soup for dinner.

~*~

Cas feels numb as he shoves the groceries into the passenger seat, thinks he might understand what Gabe meant when he said the Winchesters kept to themselves for a reason. With rumors like that floating around, anyone would. They’re not true. He knows they’re not, but the sheer viciousness shakes him more than the rumor itself.

He drives the winding road back to the house in a daze, barely even remembering to slow down for the train tracks. Kudzu is slowly encroaching on the peeling white-on-black ‘God Is The Answer’ billboard that marks his turn off the main road, and the Mini sits too low for comfort creeping along the road that winds up the mountain to Gabriel’s house.

Cas silently unlocks the front door and puts the cold groceries in the refrigerator on autopilot. He leaves the rest on the table to deal with later. The buzz of his own thoughts is so loud that he can barely make out their tenor. Sam is seventeen, and he’s living with that kind of shit floating around. Suddenly Cas understands why the younger WInchester was so unfazed by his reputation.

Despite his best attempts to be quiet, the humidity-saturated wood of the stairs creak as he climbs them. He bypasses his own room and goes straight for Gabriel’s, turning the doorknob so the door shuts soundlessly. The room is the muffled dark of blackout curtains and blinds, and Gabe’s light snores are the only sound.

Cas stands there silently, unsure what he even intended. He needs someone to talk to-- someone not Sam-- but it’s at least two hours until his cousin usually gets up. So, he resolves to waits. He leans his head back against the wood paneling and watches the clock on the nightstand flick from 2:39 to 2:40.

The passing time registers only in the inhale and exhale of his breath. He counts in for seven second, out for eleven-- the way Balthazar taught him when the stress and anxiety of Michael’s inexorable pressure started to become too much.

He can still hear the older man’s light accent guiding him through basic meditations, feel the reassuring press of his hand against his neck. Balthazar had always been far more tactile than anyone in his immediate family, his warm touches and light hair ruffles grounding Cas in the present instead of the uncertain future. One of the greatest gifts in Castiel’s life is that he’s never felt any attraction towards Balthazar. The older man is everything Cas could want-- funny, rich, and smart with a vein of kindness hidden under the sardonic posturing-- but he was too much Cas’s emotional rock for Cas to be attracted to him.

The bed sheets rustle after an indeterminate time, and Gabe’s head tilts up just enough to squint at his cousin. “Cas?” he asks blearily.

Cas glances at the clock; he’s been sitting here for nearly an hour without even registering the passing time.

Gabe’s brow furrows, and he sits up. “You okay?”

Cas can only mutely shake his head because, no, he doesn’t think he is. He’s not blank, but he’s not far from it, either. He feels unsteady, like is world is tilting under his feet and he has to fight to hang on.

“Come here,” Gabe says and pats the edge of the bed. When Cas doesn’t move, Gabe stands just long enough to tug Cas down next to him. “Tell me what happened.”

Cas opens his mouth, closes it, and swallows hard before trying again. “A girl came up to me while I was at the store. She started asking me things-- things about Sam and Dean because she saw me with them.”

Gabe’s expression says he understands instantly. “Oh Cassy,” he sighs out. There’s so much knowing pity in the words, like he knew all along that this would happen but still hoped it wouldn’t.

“How could she just say that-- Just come right out with it, right there in the soup aisle?” Cas asks indignantly, because that’s what really gets him, not the rumor itself but the brashness of it.

“Oh boy. How do I explain this?” Gabriel rolls his eyes towards the ceiling as if seeking guidance. “You've lived your whole life in Boston. Small towns are different. The Winchester boys-- they’re the wrong boys from the wrong side of the tracks.”

Cas scowls. “What do you mean? They’re poor, sure, but so is a lot of the town.”

Gabe runs a tired hand over his face, and suddenly he looks so much older, like having to tell Cas the harsh truth about his new friends has exhausted him more than hit twelve hour shifts.

“They were always closer than most siblings, apparently. Too tactile. Too poor. Too much stacked against them. Most of this was before I moved here, obviously, but it’s a small town,” he says. “Dean even did a couple months in juvie for car theft and battery. And no, that’s no rumor. One of the social workers at the hospital was involved with their case.”

Cas swallows down his confusion and asks, “Their case?”

“Those boys grew up up rough. They settled in the trailer park just past the chop shop when Sam was about twelve,” Gabe explains. “Their daddy-- I don’t know too much about him, but you hear things. Drifting bounty hunter turned town drunk, or so the story goes.”

Gabe shakes his head like he finds repeating the rumor distasteful before continuing, “Anyhow, the boys got left on their own a lot while daddy dearest when hunting payouts and going on benders. Child Protective Services got involved at one point. They tried to take Sam away  _ without Dean _ , and Dean punched the guy from social services.”

“How--?” Cas starts, but Gabe cuts him off.

“I don’t know the details, so don’t ask. I’m not going to dignify anything people say in town by repeating it. I’m only going to tell you what I know for a fact.” Gabe shakes his head. “Fast forward a couple years, and Dean unofficially takes custody of Sam. I don’t think it’s anything official, because eighteen year old high school dropout with a record takes custody of his fourteen year-old brother?”

Gabe shakes his head like the idea is ridiculous. “I doubt it. But their daddy is pretty much out of the picture, and social services leaves them alone as far as I know. Maybe they just got sick of them.” He shrugs tiredly, like the idea of a government agency giving up on troublesome boys like they’re worthless is distasteful. “Anyhow, they’ve lived alone in that little shack down past Ella ever since I’ve lived here. They’ve kept pretty well out of trouble, but that doesn’t stop people from talking.”

Cas doesn’t know what Gabe intends by telling him this. “They’ve been good to me,” he says, and maybe Dean hasn’t been that good to him, but he’s at least been trying to do his best by his brother.

“I’m not saying they haven’t been,”Gabe says, raising his hands. “I’m not telling you to stay away from them, either. I just want you to understand where the rumors come from. They’re all they have, and when siblings are that close, sometimes it creates a certain-- perception.”

“How long have the rumors been going around?” Cas asks, even though he doesn’t think he wants to know.

Gabe tilts his head back to stare at the ceiling. “I can’t rightly say. Shit-talk has come and gone over the years-- that they deal narcotics, that they’re criminals on the run, that they make meth on the side. That sorta’ bullshit. But the ince-- the one you heard, that one’s been around at least since I first moved here.”

Cas clenches his hands together. That means Sam’s been living with this over his head since he was fourteen, maybe earlier. His stomach roils with disgust. Any normal person would be repulsed at the insinuations of sibling incest, but Cas is more disgusted at the people who held this over the head of someone so young.

But the worst part, the part that makes cas ache with guilt, is that as much as the rumor horrifies him, he can see where it comes from, and that makes his stomach threaten to turn on him.

~*~

“You’re awfully quiet today,” Sam says, nudging Cas with his elbow. “Everything okay?”

“Fine,” Cas lies. He stares out over the river, unable to look Sam in the eye. Even if Cas didn’t invite the gossip, he feels dirty, like he’s somehow betrayed his friend by hearing those things he never wanted to hear.

“Really, because you don’t look it.”

Cas sighs. “It’s just-- When I was in town yesterday, a girl called Ruby approached me. She seemed to know who I was.”

“Ruby? Was she giving you a hard time about your family?” Sam’s face hardens, and he says, “Just ignore her. She’s a rumor monger coke-head who deals to every girl at school who wants to skip lunch. Don’t worry about her.”

Cas shakes his head. “No, no. She didn’t seem to care about me.” He hesitates, then decides honesty is probably the best rout. Sam deserves to know that he’s heard. “She-- she asked me about you.”

Sam’s expression goes blank. “What about?”

“She asked me about you and Dean and the… nature of your relationship,” Cas says.

Sam stands, shoving his feet back into his sandals. “I’ve got to go,” he says without looking up.

“Sam!” Cas scrambles to his feet, but Sam is already half jogging down the path. He lunges and catches the taller boy’s arm. “Please, Sam.”

Sam breaks his grip in one well practiced move that speaks of training. He stands tall, not slouching for once, defensive and afraid for all the power hiding just under the surface of his skin. He wears the look of someone ready to fight and win if he has to, and Cas is reminded of what Gabe said-- that the Winchesters grew up rough.

But under all of that there’s still that sad puppy expression, the one that doesn’t belong on the face of someone so large.

“It’s a rumor,” Cas says. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t care.”

“You will,” Sam says softly. “When school starts in August and you’re suddenly the guy who helped cover a ponzi scheme and hangs out with the incest brothers, you’ll care then.”

And that is the end of Cas’s rope.

“I am sick of rumors!” he growls, voice low and harsh. “I’m sick of people assuming they know the truth. And I am sick--” He stabs a finger at Sam’s chest. “--of people assuming they know what’s best for me. If I want to go to college to be an English major instead of a business major, I’ll do it. If I want to marry a man instead of a woman, I’ll do it. And if I want to start school being the Judas queer who is friends with the incest boy, I’ll damned well do it.”

Cas stands there, chest heaving as Sam stares at him in shock. He doesn’t think he’s ever yelled like that before. He knows he hasn’t ever referred to himself as anything other than straight before, at least not aloud.

Sam moves towards him, and he has just enough time to brace for impact before Sam’s arms wind around his shoulders. It takes him a moment to realize he’s being hugged, not attacked, and even once his brain registers this, he can only stand there stiffly.

His family have never been a particularly tactile bunch, even before what little family dynamic they had went to hell. Gabe is the only one who ever shows him any physical affection, and even that is usually in the form of hair ruffles and playful pokes. Cas can’t help remembering what Gabe said about how tactile the Winchester’s are with each other fueling the rumors.

After a long moment, he awkwardly brings his arms up to wrap around Sam’s waist.


End file.
